Ben Rivers: Ways of Worldmaking

by Renee Gladman

Ways of Worldmaking is the first comprehensive monograph on British experimental filmmaker Ben Rivers (born 1972). Often following people who have in some way separated themselves from society, the raw film footage provides Rivers with a starting point for creating oblique narratives imagining alternative existences in marginal worlds.

272 pages, Hardcover

Published January 24, 2017

About the author

Renee Gladman is an artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of writing, drawing and architecture. She is the author of numerous published works, including a cycle of novels about the city-state Ravicka and its inhabitants, the Ravickians—Event Factory (2010), The Ravickians (2011), Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge (2013), and Houses of Ravicka (2017)—all published by Dorothy. Her most recent books are My Lesbian Novel (2024) and a reprint of her 2008 book TOAF (both also from Dorothy). Recent essays and visual work have appeared in The Architectural Review, POETRY, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and e-flux, in addition to several artist monographs and exhibition catalogs. Gladman’s first solo exhibition of drawings, The Dreams of Sentences, opened in fall 2022 at Wesleyan University, followed by Narratives of Magnitude at Artists Space in New York City in spring 2023. She has been awarded fellowships and artist residencies from the Menil Drawing Institute, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, among others, and received a Windham-Campbell prize in fiction in 2021. She makes her home in New England.

Reviews

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ways of Worldmaking offers a compelling and insightful exploration of British experimental filmmaker Ben Rivers, presenting the first comprehensive study of his work. The book captures how Rivers transforms raw footage of individuals living at the margins of society into oblique, imaginative narratives that challenge conventional ideas of community and existence. It’s an engaging read for those interested in experimental cinema, alternative storytelling, and the quiet power of worlds built outside the mainstream.

[melancholinary · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an artist monograph, this is surprisingly informative in delving into the process and background of each work that Ben Rivers has done prior to 2017. What I also like: transcript. I like artist monograph with transcripts of their work.